Forum Flash | The Gettysburg re-address

Abraham Lincoln

Proving it's never too late to say "I'm sorry," this week the Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot-News retracted a 150-year-old editorial that panned Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, what William Safire called in his "Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History," "the best short speech since the Sermon on the Mount."

Now that's some heady company but apparently that sentiment cut no mustard way back when, at least in one ivory tower. The purple sages at the Patriot-News (then the Patriot & Union) - staunch Democrats to Mr. Lincoln's Republican - skewered President Lincoln for his "silly words."

On the eve of the sesquicentennial of the magnificent, 266-word speech, the inheritors of this smudge on their paper's reputation finally corrected the record thusly:

"The world will little note nor long remember our emendation of this institution's record - but we must do as conscience demands: